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By the numbers, the 7th annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival, held June 10-12, was an amazing weekend:
41 films + 39 filmmakers + 23 Community Partners + 9 Co-Presenters + 20 hardworking Festival Team
members, then add volunteers + over 100 local businesses and multiplied exponentially by almost 2,000 audience
members.
Yet numbers cannot encompass what we heard from you:
"I'm hungry and horny"
"That was hilarious!"
"These films are a healing"
Over and over again, we heard: beautiful, inspiring, hard-working, supportive, blessing, mind-expanding, proud, honored, love, community, create, grateful.
For this and more, we would like to thank you! It is your words, your joy and your beauty, that inspire us everyday. For you, we work hard to present our FREE Queer Women of Color Film Festival. A place where we can love each other fiercely, authentically reflect our fabulous communities, and create the world that we all want to see.
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Yeah, Yerba Buena
 Now, if you just so happened to miss our FREE 7th annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival (QWOCFF), you might have missed the big news. Next year, our 2012 QWOCFF will be held in the 757-seat Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA). That's right, you told us that you wanted a bigger venue, and we've worked hard to make that happen. The Novellus has more than double the seats at Brava Theater. Seats galore!!!
FREE? Yes, FREE!
Terrific Truth #1: QWOCMAP's commitment to ECONOMIC JUSTICE is the reason we present our annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival FREE to the community. Total Truth #2: Like other organizations, QWOCMAP has always paid standard rental prices for each venue where we present our Film Festival. This has been true from our days at the SF LGBT Community Center. Transparent Truth #3:
As demand grows, we have moved our Film Festival to bigger venues with bigger costs, to better serve our enthusiastic audiences. Yet our commitment to offer a FREE Film Festival has never wavered. Tantalizing Truth #4:Economic Justice needs all of us. From
incredible individual donors to phenomenal Community Partner
organizations, many have given QWOCMAP much-needed financial
support to present our Film Festival FREE to our multiple
communities.
Tempting Truth #5:Capitalism (yes, we said it), leads us to devalue, or take for granted, anything that is FREE. Think about it: Fierce films, festive feasts, and fabulous folks at our FREE
Queer Women of Color Film Festival, plus the joy of building community through art and activism. Can you get that at AMC or Century or other film festivals? No? Then show us how you value a FREE Film Festival. If you're not already part of the QWOCMAP donor community, you can be. Right now!
Get There Together
 We need your help to rock YBCA like QWOCstars! We need 150 people to step up and say ¡Ya vamos! by donating $10 a month ($120 for the year). It's like layaway for creating films, filmmakers and community. After all, who else do you support every month? PG&E, Starbucks, Verizon? Instead, imagine supporting the amazing vibrancy of our communities. Then join us!
 Thank You!
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QWOCstars Coverage
Audience Award!
 Congratulations to QWOCMAP Filmmaker Dulce Garcia, for her film With Conviction, which won the first ever Audience Award for Best Film at our 2011 Queer Women of Color Film Festival. We and Dulce's mom (a rockstar in her own right) are extremely proud of her and her film about fat fierce & feisty Femmes!
Filmmaker Awards!
Our Closing Night Party at the fabulous SOM Bar featured the presentation of the first ever API Filmmaker Awards. Thanks to an API QWOCMAP Filmmaker, we presented both Priti Narayanan, director of Legally Challenged and Truc Nguyen, director of Help Wanted, a cash award. 
Sharing QWOClove!
 QWOCMAP Filmmakers keep circling the globe with their powerful films. Their work appeared in 5 different screenings at Frameline35, like " Fierce & Fabulous" (curated by QWOCMAP), " Gayby" and " Sazòn y
Sabor." If you missed us in San Francisco, we'll be spreading the love your way
soon. Join us at Philadelphia's GenderReel Film Festival in September. Want to see QWOCMAP Films in your city? Contact us: distribution@qwocmap.org
Receiving Love
 Screenings like Homegrown Gifts celebrated our chosen and queer families. And we were also blessed to have the theater filled with our parents, siblings and children. Our favorite story is of the mom who told her QWOCMAP Filmmaker daughter, "your dad has no idea how proud he could be of you right now."
Showing Love
 Our Film Festival audiences came from Australia, India, Sweden, Canada, D.C., New York, Maryland, Texas, Los Angeles and Stockton. The prize for absolute dedication goes to the woman who traveled on public transportation from rural Northern Sierras. We appreciate your love. Thank You!
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Bye Bye to Brava
This year has been bittersweet because it was our last year at Brava Theater. Like QWOCMAP, they are an arts organization committed to
"celebrating the
intersection of feminism and multiculturalism that ignites social
changes and builds community." For this reason, Brava has been our jam-packed and jamming home for 5 years. We want to express our love and gratitude to Brava, where our Queer Women of Color Film Festival has truly flourished.
We Are Worth It!
 At this year's Film Festival, we premiered a health PSA, produced by QWOCMAP Productions in partnership with the Lesbian Health & Research Center. The PSA features our courageous community members telling their stories about real health issues. Butches getting their breasts checked. Queer women addressing cancer. Lesbians with endometriosis. Femme mamas getting pregnant despite a homophobic healthcare system. Transgender women working for their survival. Fat femmes dominating diabetes through daily elliptical workouts.  We are
thrilled that so many of you filled out the LHRC survey and were inspired to improve your health. As a part of social justice, healing requires that we not only take care of ourselves but encourage the health of our community. We are worth it!
BBQ & Boating!
 We just want to make sure that you are ready for a day of fun at our our 5th annual BBQ & Boating at Lake Chabot on Sunday, September 11.
BRING YOUR:
• children & cuties
• fur kids (doggies!)
• games & sports equipment
• grub to grill• savories to share
TIPS to TORQUE up your FUN:
• WET is WILD!
Rent a row boat, canoe, pedal boat (woohoo!), kayak or take a lake tour!  TAKE TRANSIT
or CARPOOL!
 Learn how to make your own film! The registration deadline for the next cycle of our Filmmaker Training Program is Friday, July 29. Then join us onstage when your film premieres at our 2012 Queer Women of Color Film Festival! 
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